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SCSMT Meetings

The South Central Society for Music Theory is very pleased to announce its 2012 Annual Meeting at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette, Louisiana, on Friday and Saturday, February 24 and 25, 2012.

The program committee solicits paper proposals on any topic relating to music theory and analysis.

EMAIL DEADLINE: Friday, December 9, 2011. Confirmation of proposals received will be made electronically upon their receipt.

Submission format:

1) Proposals should be no longer than three pages (including footnotes but not back matter); they should be double-spaced, and use a 12-point font. Proposals should be anonymous, and articulate clearly the paper's premise and its relation to existing music theoretic research, and provide some illustration of applications.

2) Send one (1) MS Word or .pdf format e-mail attachment to: douglas.rust@usm.edu. Please put "SCSMT 2012 Proposal" in the subject heading. In this email, list the title of the paper, the author's name (with rank and institutional affiliation if applicable), and the author's address, telephone number and e-mail address. Please also list any technical requirements (stereo playback, piano, computer or overhead projector, etc.).

3) Send one (1) copy of an anonymous 200-word abstract, submitted electronically to the address above, for publication in the meeting abstracts booklet. Please put "SCSMT 2012 Abstract" in the subject heading.

4) If the author is a student wishing to be considered for the SCSMT Student Paper Award, please indicate student status in the email. Candidates for the student award must submit a copy of the full paper to the address above by January 3, 2012.

Program committee:

 Danny Beard (University of Southern Mississippi)
John Latartara (University of Mississippi)
Douglas Rust, Chair (University of Southern Mississippi)
Janna K. Saslaw (Loyola University New Orleans)
Alan Theisen (Mars Hill College)



Joint Conference of Music Theory Southeast and
South-Central Society for Music Theory
March 11-12, 2011
Florida State University College of Music
Tallahassee, Florida

→ Click for Conference Registration
→ Click for Local Accommodations
→ Click for Abstracts


Preliminary Program

→ Click to download a pdf version of the Program

All papers, refreshments, and registrations will take place on the second floor of the Longmire Building at the Florida State University College of Music.

FRIDAY, MARCH 11

8:00-9:00 a.m. Registration and Continental Breakfast (Longmire Conference Room)

9:10 a.m. Welcome from Dr. Seth Beckman, Associate Dean, College of Music, Florida State University

Session 1 (9:10-10:40 a.m.) Pop and Jazz (Longmire Recital Hall)
Ciro Scotto, University of South Florida, chair

10:40-11:00 a.m. Coffee Break (Longmire Conference Room)

Session 2 (11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.) Voice Leading (Longmire Recital Hall)
Jill T. Brasky, University of South Florida, chair

12:00-1:30 p.m. Lunch Break (nearby restaurants listed in conference packet)

Session 3 (1:30-3:00 p.m.) Borrowing (Longmire Recital Hall)
Tomoko Deguchi (Winthrop University), chair

3:00-3:15 p.m. Coffee Break (Longmire Conference Room)

Session 4 (3:15-4:45 p.m.) Post-Tonal Music (I) (Longmire Recital Hall)
J. Daniel Jenkins, University of South Carolina, chair

5:15-6:15 p.m. Short Concert: Duo Fujin (Longmire Recital Hall)

5-7 p.m. Graduate Student Workshop (Keursteiner Music Building, Room 202)
Leader: Adrian Childs, University of Georgia

7:15 p.m. til Group Dinner (restaurant TBA)


SATURDAY, MARCH 12

8:00-9:00 a.m. Registration and Continental Breakfast (Longmire Conference Room)

Session 5 (9:00-10:30 a.m.) Post-Tonal Music (II) (Longmire Recital Hall)
David Smyth, Louisiana State University, chair

10:30-10:45 p.m. Coffee Break (Longmire Conference Room)

Session 6 (10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m.) The Tonal Traditions
Joseph Kraus, Florida State University, chair

12:15-1:00 p.m. Lunch Break (nearby restaurants listed in conference packet)

1:00-2:00 p.m. SCSMT Business Meeting (Longmire Recital Hall)

2:00-3:00 p.m. MTSE Business Meeting (Longmire Recital Hall)

Session 7 (3:00-4:30 p.m.) New Approaches (Longmire Recital Hall)
Evan Jones, Florida State University, chair
6-9 p.m. NCAA Baseball: FSU vs. Boston College (Dick Howser Stadium)
If you are interested in group tickets (only $3 if we get 20 people; otherwise $6), please contact Michael Buchler at mbuchler@fsu.edu.



Local Accommodations


All conference events will take place at the FSU College of Music (Longmire Building), which is located on the north-east part of campus, near the intersection of Copeland Street and Park Avenue. Campus maps can be found at: http://www.facilities.fsu.edu/Planning_Space_Management/Maps.php

The official conference hotel is Aloft Tallahassee Downtown (200 North Monroe Street, Tallahassee, FL 32301; 850-513-0313). It is a brand new and very modern hotel downtown, about a 10-15 minute walk from the College of Music. Mention “music theory conference” for a rate of $89/night for bookings made by February 28.

There are other hotels within walking distance, mostly other downtown luxury hotels and the much more humble University Inn and Suites (691 West Tennessee Street, Tallahassee FL 32304), which is both inexpensive and very close to the College of Music, but it might not be as clean or quiet as other offerings.

There are also a lot of budget hotels in easy driving distance on North Monroe Street and Thomasville Road, near I-10 exits 199 and 203 (respectively). This conference is during the FSU spring break, so finding rooms will not be a problem.



MTSE/SCSMT 2011 Abstract


→ Click to download a pdf version of the MTSE/SCSMT 2011 Abstract

SESSION 1: POP AND JAZZ

“I've seen him write songs in the time it's taken me to make a chicken sandwich”: Schemata and Elton John's Compositional Practice
Benjamin Anderson (Northwestern University)
In a recent documentary, Davey Johnstone, the longtime guitarist for the Elton John Band, said, “I?ve seen him write songs in the time it?s taken me to make a chicken sandwich. . . .” While to my knowledge there is no video evidence of Elton John in the act of composing, one must wonder how someone could write songs so quickly. ! Robert Gjerdingen?s Music in the Galant Style (2007) described how young eighteenth-century musicians created mental representations—schemata—from stock patterns from the music of their time. The processes and principles outlined in that study would seem equally applicable to the development of stylistic knowledge in pop musicians. This paper applies Gjerdingen?s methodology to the music of Elton John, isolating the most frequently used patterns that appear with similar formal functions. ! The paper will specifically examine four schemata: the Border Schema, the Chameleon, the Levon, and the Na-na-na. After introducing these schemata, I will demonstrate how they can be mapped onto the tunes “Thank You Mama” and “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters.” Analyzing these songs using schemata will help to demonstrate how Elton John could have used a lexicon of schemata to write songs faster than Johnstone could make a chicken sandwich.

Expressing the Inexpressible: Thelonious Monk’s “Crepuscule with Nellie”
Michael McClimon (Indiana University)
While many jazz musicians and authors talk about “creating a story” with their improvisations, expressive meaning in original jazz composition has not received adequate attention in music analysis. Building on Robert Hatten’s theories of markedness and musical agency along with Garrett Michaelson’s topical approach to jazz “grooves,” I use Thelonious Monk’s “Crepuscule with Nellie” as a case study for the examination of musical meaning in jazz composition. “Crepuscule with Nellie” provides an ideal sample for this type of inquiry. Monk wrote the piece in May 1957, while his wife Nellie was hospitalized having her thyroid removed. It is a unique piece in Monk’s output (and unusual for jazz in general) in that it was never played with any improvisation; the piece was simply the “head” of the tune, with no solos. Monk felt that the composition should stand alone, as a kind of concerto written for his wife. My paper asks the obvious question: What is it about this work that makes it somehow too intimate to be commented on, by Monk or anyone else? A thorough analysis of this work helps to illuminate how a consideration of expressive meaning can enhance our understanding of both Monk’s unique style and, more generally, the art of jazz expression.

One Piece at a Time: Riff Schemes and Form in Early American Hardcore Punk
David Easley (Florida State University)
Despite being the subject of extensive studies in ethnomusicology, cultural studies, philosophy, and history, punk rock—and specifically American hardcore punk—has yet to capture the analytical gaze of music theorists. In this paper, I specifically engage early American hardcore punk music (1978 to 1983), focusing on the construction of guitar riffs and their role in creating form. Although this study is limited to four bands—Black Flag, Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys, and Minor Threat—my discussions are applicable to a wide variety of other punk rock groups. I begin by discussing several organizational schemes for guitar riffs, each of which is defined by pitch and rhythm, but more so by the physical gestures a guitarist must complete in performing the riff. There are four main types: (1) riffs that begin with a series of repeated gestures before undergoing change; (2) riffs that begin with a series of repeated gestures before undergoing a change that alters the previous periodicity, creating an extension; (3) riffs that follow a pattern of statement, departure, restatement, conclusion; and (4) riffs in which an initial gesture is subject to transposition. I relate these to form, highlighting the process as an accrual (and repetition) of riffs. In addition to serving an organizational purpose, riff schemes are (often) used to create tension and climax, and I conclude my paper with an example from Minor Threat’s “Think Again,” a song that demonstrates this usage.


SESSION 2: VOICE LEADING

Wormholes in the Space-Time Continuum: A Speculative Theory of Parsimonious Seventh-Chord Relationships
Enoch S.A. Jacobus (University of Kentucky)
The advent of the neo-Riemannian Tonnetz provided a fresh perspective in our understanding of chromatic tonality. As a visual map of pitch-class space, the Tonnetz did what Roman numerals could not, namely to chart a composer’s path through a number of possible parsimonious transformations. The seventh chord has received far less treatment, even though its various qualities can, and have been, connected through parsimonious transformations. Certain treatments by Bass, Childs, Douthett and Steinbach, and Gollin have resulted in worthwhile studies, but none incorporate all five commonly occurring types of seventh chords. This paper proposes a possible seventh-chord “map of parsimony,” accounting for all five qualities of seventh chords. In the first part, I form seventh chords from traditional, neo-Riemannian Tonnetze via the interaction of two triads whose roots are a third apart, necessitating the need to account for diminished triads in a strictly consonant space. Such a model provides for the generation of two other two-dimensional maps of seventh-chord pc space, which, when combined, create a three-dimensional model. In the second part, I bring all of these notions back to the real world in some passages of works by Chopin. My intention in this discussion is to provide a tool for the analysis of seventh chord mutation and a conceptual framework for composers and improvisers.

Voice Leading and Dramatic Interpretation in a Schoenberg Song
Michael Siciliano (University of Georgia)
I would like to discuss the interaction of two streams of relations in Song XV of Schoenberg’s Songs of the Hanging Gardens, op. 15. One stream is a familiar kind: a stream following varied recurrences of the opening material, mostly at points of formal articulation. The other is a less familiar kind of relation. This stream treats a three- component voice leading, as motivic, one in which some notes sustain, some move by half step, and some by whole step in the same direction, independent of any specific chords. This motivic voice leading is not unlike one proposed by John Roeder. The interaction between these streams allows one to understand how the successive variations of the opening material reveal the same three-component voice leading latent in the opening material and is highlighted by the final recurrence. The net effect is that music that is associated with the poet’s pleasant memories of his lover can be understood as contaminated with the voice leading associated with the lover’s rejection. That is, the relationship contained the seeds of its own destruction.


SESSION 3: BORROWING

Meaningful Manipulations of the Medieval Tenor in Machaut’s Motet
Justin Lavacek (Indiana University)
In this paper, two of Guillaume de Machaut’s motets (M4 and M9) sharing the same chant tenor are examined for how they rely upon its foundation to produce compositions of quite different ends, both modally and exegetically. To this end, I introduce the concept of contest, developed in response to a contrapuntal “power struggle” between the lines of some medieval polyphony generated from a cantus firmus, in order to interpret music in which newly-composed (and traditionally subordinate) upper voices occasionally inflect and even reinterpret the tenor’s pitch material and, by correlation, the message of its text. As opposed to faithful conformance, moments of contest thus undermine the foundational role of chant in sacred medieval polyphony. The glossing of scripture, whereby new meanings were generated during reception and promulgation of a text, was a common practice contemporaneous to Machaut and contest may be seen as its analog in the language of music. Machaut's musical choices as to which contrapuntal faction will momentarily assume the reins of a motet will be shown to correlate with and further inform the amorous/spiritual message of the texts he sets. Through examination of contrapuntal manipulations both within and between these two works, the former motet is seen to typify chivalric subordination to a revered higher power while the latter seems a righteous exemplum by the canonized composer-poet railing against the “most evil beast” of its tenor, a battle depicted as vividly by Machaut’s polyphonic settings as in his poetic texts.

Takemitsu’s Dialogue with Debussy: What Quotation of Dream Can Teach Us About La mer
Douglas Rust (University of Southern Mississippi)
This presentation will use Toru Takemitsu’s 1991 two-piano concerto, entitled Quotation of Dream, as a vantage point from which to gain a new understanding of Debussy’s classic symphonic tone poem, La mer. The two compositions share an uncommon relationship in that Quotation of Dream contains seventeen brief quotations from La mer (and each quotation is labeled on the published score). Considered together, all of the documented quotations between these two pieces create favorable conditions for an analysis that compares the two texts—one that will provide insights that may not be gained if the pieces were analyzed separately. The resulting intertextual analysis will lead to questions about the benefits and limitations of using syntactic codes, and about whether comparisons of syntax provide unique insight into each composer’s aesthetic orientation. This presentation will offer well-documented answers to those questions in an effort to show not only what Debussy’s music means in its new context, but also what a new understanding of these excerpts in Quotation of Dream can teach us about La mer.

Schoenberg’s Paradox: (In)Comprehensibility and the Variations on a Recitative, Op. 40
J. Judith Ofcarcik (Florida State University)
Schoenberg was less than candid about his own use of musical form. On the one hand, he often contextualized his own work as the obvious outgrowth of the music of the past, and thus employed earlier forms in new ways. On the other, he sometimes responded to critics, who claimed that his music was not progressive enough, by distancing himself from the same common-practice forms. Schoenberg’s paradoxical stance creates a problem for the listener, who cannot necessarily take Schoenberg’s own formal designations at face value, even when they are written directly into the score. The little-known Variations on a Recitative for organ (Op. 40) presents a prime example of this problem, as it is surprisingly difficult to follow the form as Schoenberg apparently intended. Hepokoski’s notion of dialogic form (2010) provides a useful lens through which we can examine how the piece enters into a “...dialogue with culturally pre-established generic expectations within the craft.” The exploration of ambiguity in this composition will reveal how form is not necessarily something inherent in “the music itself,” but rather results from an unending trialogue of composer, performer, and listener, as well as a dialogue with the established genre of theme and variations.


SESSION 4: POST-TONAL MUSIC (I)

Transformation and Enlargement in Barber’s Four Songs, Op. 13
Peter Silberman (Ithaca College)
Much post-tonal music of the twentieth century is triadic, including compositions by Barber, Britten, Copland, Poulenc, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and others. While deeper-level structures are suggested by the triadic surfaces and tonal centers of this repertoire, uncovering such structures is problematic. Reliable methodologies such as Schenkerian analysis, developed for an earlier repertoire, are a poor fit with post-tonal music due to the absence of tonic-dominant relationships, unusual chord successions, and other features. This presentation will investigate deeper relationship of pitch levels in Barber’s Four Songs, Op. 13, drawing on recent research that suggests that the triadic surfaces of some post-tonal works sit atop a deeper level organized by post-tonal procedures. I will combine a transformational approach with the phenomenon of enlargement, defined by Alegant and McLean (2001) as occurring “when a surface (or near surface) object (usually an ordered string of notes) is subsequently ‘enlarged,’ or re-presented in temporally expanded form.” After a discussion of enlargement with examples, I will show that in two of the songs in Four Songs, one Neo-Riemannian transformation and one transformation unique to Barber’s works combine with enlargement of a surface motive to produce coherent middleground structures. I will also show the transformations and enlarged motive in the other two songs. Further, the transformations and motive interact with the songs’ texts to amplify their meaning, and my presentation will conclude with examples of text/music relations and commentary on other extramusical features of the song cycle.

Text, Harmony, and Transformation in Frank Martin's Sechs Monologe aus Jedermann
Alan Theisen (Indiana University)
Frank Martin (1890-1974) was one of the eminent Swiss composers of the twentieth century, lauded by audiences and critics alike for works including Petite Symphonie Concertante (commissioned by Paul Sacher), the oratorio Le Vin Herbé, Mass for double choir, and his set of Ballades for solo instrument and orchestra. Martin's mature compositional language belongs to no "school" and freely synthesizes disparate influences including French Impressionistic and late nineteenth-century chromatic harmonies, neo-Classical rhythmic gestures, Medieval polyphony, and techniques adapted from Schoenbergian twelve-tone serialism. Perhaps due in part to this stylistic hybridization, Martin's music has not received much attention from contemporary Anglophone music theorists as common post-tonal analytical methodologies generally struggle with highly variegated harmonic landscapes. Therefore, this paper will build on research by Billeter, Louer, Massenkeil, and Tupper and examine Frank Martin's vocal work Sechs Monologe aus Jedermann with a focus on how its composer fused harmony, tonal motion, a predominately parlando vocal manner, and text to create a large-scale transformative dramatic structure. Written in the middle of World War II, the Jedermann cycle is of special significance since it was the first explicitly religious and philosophical composition by the devout Martin since he solidified his mature style in the late 1930s.

From the Individual to the Communal: Narrative Trajectory in Clifton Callender’s Reasons to Learne to Sing
Juan Chattah (University of Miami)
The musical discourse of Clifton Callender’s Reasons to Learne to Sing, for mixed choir and organ, outlines a clear narrative trajectory, independently of any programmatic associations suggested by the title or the accompanying text by William Byrd. I argue that the isotopic environment and a process of transvaluation are the primary means for articulating the narrative level within this work. Drawing on set theory and on analytical methodologies of musical and literary narrativity developed by Byron Almén and Eero Tarasti, I first identify the various isotopies (musico-semantic units, or agential level), and subsequently attend to the temporal and hierarchical unfolding of isotopies manifested as changes in markedness and ranking (musico-syntactic and musico-morphological processes, or actantial level). Having established the agential level, the primary areas of musical conflict, and the actantial level, I then conceive the narrative level as the product of a metaphorical mapping of musico-syntactic and musico-morphological processes onto an extramusical realm. As a result, I propose a narrative interpretation of this work that recognizes musical oppositions in terms of sociodynamic situations.


SESSION 5: POST-TONAL MUSIC (II)

Classifications and Designations of Metric Modulations in the Music of Elliott Carter
Jason Hobert (University of Kentucky)
Ever since the term “metric modulation” was introduced by Richard Franko Goldman to describe certain passages in Elliott Carter’s Cello Sonata, it has become customary (perhaps even compulsory) for analysts to identify such modulations in Carter’s music to demonstrate metric modulation. As a result, metric modulation has become a signature technique for much of Carter’s music—one that many theorists and musicologists would use to help them identify his style. Yet, despite the common familiarity with the term, there remains much to be learned about metric modulation. The musicological community has not yet debated whether metric modulations can be achieved by more than one compositional technique, nor have they discussed which musical events, that affect meter or tempo, can properly be considered as metric modulations. This paper will recognize and label a group of techniques for metric modulation in an earnest effort to begin that important discussion. In this presentation, four different types of metric modulation—Pulse Modulation, Duration Modulation, Abrupt Modulation, and Written Accelerando Modulation, and four different functions—Formal Division, Transition, Time Control, and Character Designation—will be discussed. Compositions spanning fifty years of Carter’s career will be used to illustrate these classifications and designations of metric modulation.

Modeling Melody and Harmony: Cyclic Unfolding in Ginastera’s String Quartets Nos. 1 and 2
David Sommerville (Nazareth College)
Despite its richness, popularity, amenity to established analytic avenues, and its potential to support new directions in music-theoretical research, the music of Alberto Ginastera has received relatively little attention within the music theory community. In general, his music is viewed from one of two broad perspectives: 1) its relationship with Argentine nationalism or 2) its tonal orientation. The former perspective considers his career based on the presence or absence of nationalistic traits, while the latter evaluates it from a firmer music-theoretical standpoint. Both models privilege the composer’s First String Quartet (1948) and the Second String Quartet (1958) as critical agents of stylistic change, yet neither has received significant attention among scholars engaging the repertoire. This proposal considers the two quartets in the context of these two views then develops an analytical methodology designed to integrate the surface symmetry and cyclic symmetrical pc collections (octatonic, whole tone) into the larger context of methodology fundamentally rooted in the interval cycle-based theory of George Perle and its interaction with transformational and set-theory. After establishing and developing the necessary analytic machinery and terminology for fruitful analysis of Ginastera’s quartets, the paper concludes with the consideration of the broader ramifications of this study.

Harmonic Fields in Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de loin
Spencer Neil Lambright (Middle Tennessee State University)
Kaija Saariaho’s first opera L’Amour de loin employs a tapestry of spectral harmonies, serial pitch structures, lush orchestration, and modal melodies to illustrate the twelfth-century troubadour Jaufré Rudel’s apocryphal life story and his ill-fated love for the Countess of Tripoli. To coordinate pitch material in the opera, Saariaho uses the harmonic field, a pitch structure in which an unordered collection of pitches is restricted to a particular register. Although a pitch class may be represented in different octaves, octave equivalence doesn’t hold. Though the harmonic field is an essential component of the craft of composers as diverse as Tristan Murail, Anton von Webern, Luciano Berio, Elliott Carter and Witold Lutos?awski, it is frequently overlooked or given too brief a mention in the accounting of twentieth- and twenty first-century compositional techniques. This paper offers an analysis of melody and harmony in the second act of L’Amour de loin, focusing on Saariaho’s use of harmonic fields. After a brief discussion of the use of harmonic fields in Saariaho’s earlier compositions, my analysis describes their structure and function in Act II, giving careful consideration to how they are used to delineate form and coordinate voice and accompaniment in the expression of the text. Through an explication of Saariaho’s use of the harmonic field, I hope this study contributes to understanding of this common but seldom discussed compositional technique.


SESSION 6: THE TONAL TRADITIONS

Storm and Stress, Form and Process: Compositional Strategies in Haydn’s and C.P.E. Bach’s Symphonies of the Early 1770s
Jason Yust (University of Alabama)
The early 1770s witnessed a moment of enthusiastic experimentation with the musical expression of extreme emotions, what is sometimes referred to as music’s Sturm und Drang period. This paper examines two intensely dramatic minor key finales from that period: no. 5 of Bach’s symphonies for Baron von Sweiten (Wq. 183) and Haydn’s no. 44 “Trauersymphonie.” Following Janet Schmalfeldt, I interpret the pieces with a hybrid analytic method combining the form-functional analysis of William Caplin with Schenkerian analysis. A Schenkerian reading can be summarized by identifying the basic linear process associated with each formal unit. Formal units can be self-contained, initiating and completing a linear process within the unit, or structurally incomplete and continuous with other formal units. The two finales exhibit the same overall formal scheme: an expanded parallel binary form, which is unusual in Haydn’s oeuvre but common in Bach’s. Unlike Bach, Haydn restates the main theme at the beginning of the second part in an unflinchingly developmental mode. This suggests that Haydn (unlike Bach) does not view the parallel binary as a variant of sonata form, and that the tonally contrasting developmental statement of the main theme is more essential than its recapitulation in the home key.

Norms, Types, and the Davidsbündler: Schumann’s Public And Private Dialogues With the Sonata Tradition
Samantha Inman (Eastman School of Music)
Scholars of the life and works of Robert Schumann have often delighted in binary categorizations, particularly emphasizing “public” and “private.” While past public/private comparisons involving complete movements from Schumann’s large works have often focused on his instances of wide deviations from the sonata tradition, the binary can also foster greater sensitivity to subtleties in movements aligning more closely with those of his predecessors. Using Sonata Theory as developed by James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, this paper compares the opening movements of two of Schumann’s chamber works that have received opposite classifications in the literature: the “public” Piano Quintet in Eb Major, Op. 44 and the “private” Piano Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 63. The analysis of these movements focuses on pinpointing the precise features that pull towards one category or the other and understanding how these features interact in time. The distinction between the quintet’s public style and the trio’s private exchanges arises from three items: the choice of thematic materials, the degree of clarity in rhetorical markers, and the overall trajectory of their respective narratives. Recognition of the structures and processes involved in these two trends can aid in drawing deeper into the heart of a composition, unearthing the expressive power present in the classical and romantic styles.

| Grand Antecedent-Consequent Construction and the Declined Medial Caesura: A Hallmark of Felix Mendelssohn’s Sonata-Form Expositions
Jason Hooper (University of Massachusetts)
Borrowing methodology from James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy’s Elements of Sonata Theory (2006), this paper demonstrates how grand antecedent-consequent construction and the associated phenomenon of the declined medial caesura are a hallmark of Felix Mendelssohn’s sonata-form expositions. I begin by outlining the basic formal features of grand antecedent-consequent construction and the declined medial caesura by revisiting Hepokoski and Darcy’s analyses of W.A. Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 550 and Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K. 551. Next, I analyze in detail three sonata-form expositions from Mendelssohn’s chamber music that feature grand antecedent-consequent construction, including: the String Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20 (1825); the String Quartet No. 3 in D Major, Op. 44, No. 1 (1838); and the String Quintet No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 87 (1845). However, unlike the Mozart examples, all three of Mendelssohn’s expositions present unique tonal problems. In the octet, the grand consequent dissolves into transitional material, only to lock onto the wrong dominant (i.e., V/iii). In the string quartet, the grand antecedent presents a medial-caesura candidate—also on the wrong dominant (i.e., V/vi)—that is corrected later in the grand consequent. The string quintet presents a similar case, but further complications ensue due to a blocked medial caesura. As mentioned above, this paper analyzes three expositions by Mendelssohn, but many of his other works exhibit antecedent- consequent construction as well, including the Cello Sonata No. 2 in D Major, Op. 58 and the Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64. In fact, the phenomenon is so prevalent in Mendelssohn’s sonata-form expositions that we might consider it a hallmark of his style.


SESSION 7: NEW APPROACHES

An Interactive Introduction to Post-Tonal Theory
J. Kent Williams (University of North Carolina at Greensboro)
The presenter will demonstrate and discuss the pedagogical advantages of using interactive animations created with Adobe’s Flash to teach the fundamentals of post-tonal theory. Several of these animations will incorporate aspects of Robert Gauldin’s article “A Pedagogical Introduction to Set Theory (1978) in which Milton Babbitt’s Play on Notes is used as the specimen work. More specifically, the presentation will show how varying degrees of interactivity can be designed into Flash animations. These range from “movies” that merely demonstrate basic analytical processes, to tutorials that evaluate students’ responses to computational tools for performing specific analytical tasks, to longer processes that require user response(s) at certain intermediate stages, and finally to “what if” scenarios that enable experimentation and encourage discovery and learning.

Developing Musicianship through Improvisation
Nancy Rogers (Florida State University)
A well-rounded musician needs to develop excellent facility in music reading and listening. Music theory classes typically address these capacities through sight singing and dictation, respectively, but I contend that improvisation can also play a valuable role in their development. While less conventional in a classroom context, improvisation simply represents another mode of response to musical notation or sound, and may therefore complement more routine activities. Improvisation exercises can be crafted to suit any level of musical experience, connecting targeted elements with appropriate broader musical principles and patterns such as specific voice-leading tendencies or antecedent-consequent phrase structure. Improvisation provides students with an excellent opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of a musical feature as well as their ability to use it in a stylistically appropriate manner. I will advocate incorporating improvisation throughout the core theory curriculum, providing illustrative exercises suited for various levels of expertise.

Constructing Motives in Analysis: the Role of Recognition, Verification, and Privileged Relationships in Making Motivic Connections
Philip Duker (University of Delaware)
Aren’t motives everywhere in music? It would certainly seem so from the attention they are given in music scholarship. From proximate or distant links to subtle or drastic changes, pointing out motivic connections is a fundamental part of many approaches to music and plays an important role in discussions of both tonal and atonal repertoires. Yet despite the prevalence of motives in analysis, the various kinds of relationships and equivalencies that underlie the creation of these links are seldom discussed. By investigating the range of ways that writers conceive of motivic repetition, I show that rather than something straightforward, making these kinds of connections is usually intertwined within a complex web of mental processes. This paper develops a model to compare various authors’ approach to motives on the basis of how they: 1) recognize that repetition has occurred (i.e. on what basis they claim a relationship between two passages of music), 2) verify that a motive has indeed been repeated, and 3) privilege certain kinds of relationships over others (i.e. what types of connections authors find most valuable to highlight). By focusing on a range of authors who analyze works by Beethoven (the Fifth Symphony and the “Appassionata”), Brahms (the first String quartet), and Berg (passages from Wozzek), I survey a spectrum of possible ways to understand and construct motivic connections, and the concomitant repercussions they have.


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